Related articles and links |  1 of 2

No one should be an accidental evangelical—or a merely cultural one. Unfortunately, few evangelicals can actually articulate the gospel. They can lead people to Christ and help them pray the sinner's prayer, but when it comes to setting forth just how Jesus saves, most of us flounder.

Last year, two evangelical theologians had a bright idea. Wouldn't it be wonderful, they said, if evangelicals could achieve a broad consensus on the gospel and join in a common statement? These theologians felt the pinch of recent tense discussions over how to define the doctrine of justification, a key element of the gospel. They saw the need for a reference document for those engaged in interchurch dialog, for theological students, for pastors, for parachurch ministries, for itinerant evangelists, and for the rest of us. Those two theologians recruited some top Christian leaders and scholars (along with two representatives of Christianity Today). Now, almost a year later, the fruits of their passion appear below.

Of the making of many statements, there is no end. In the history of evangelical Protestantism, issues and opportunities have called forth declarations on various topics. The Lausanne Covenant (1974) is the most famous and influential, with the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) running a close second.

Curiously, those who bear the name evangelical (a term that means "of or relating to the gospel") have never put forth a large-scale defining document about the gospel. That is because the gospel itself has not been at the center of modern disputes. In the decades when many evangelical institutions were being founded (from the National Association of Evangelicals and Youth for Christ in the early forties through Fuller Seminary and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and up to Christianity Today in 1956), most Protestants agreed (at least formally) on justification, though they were at odds over a multitude of other issues.

As modern evangelicalism emerged from its isolation and engaged American culture as it then was, evangelical leaders paid attention to safeguarding the authority of the Bible and the propositional nature of truth in order to counter the existentialist, liberal, and neo-orthodox tendencies in the theological world of that day.

Today, classic theological liberalism is no longer the church's main threat. As we enter a post-Christian world, one driven by consumer culture and the entertainment industry, we face more basic challenges, such as the radical devaluation of human life. In this context, we find ourselves standing with Catholic and Orthodox believers on key social issues. In deed, through collaboration with Catholic and Orthodox activists in the prolife movement, many evangelicals have discovered a genuine appreciation for and developed friendships with them. This deeper friendship has required that Protestants know their Protestantism (and that Catholics know their Catholicism and the Orthodox, their Orthodoxy).

Providence gave the first evangelicals a gift: at the time of the Reformation, the renewal of classical learning provided an opportunity to return to the sources of the gospel, sharpen the church's understanding, and disseminate that understanding through new channels of travel, communication, and commerce. Today, in evangelicals' ongoing contact and collaboration with the historic churches, it is time for us to revisit, reaffirm, and recapture the gospel. For as religious communities and Christian individuals come together to enrich one another and work together, the biblical understanding of the good news is, first, the most important thing that we can offer friends in these churches and, second, the only thing in which we can find true unity.

next page... |  1 of 2

June 14 1999, Vol. 43, No. 7